Josh Marshall on George Bush and Osama bin Laden

It isn't pretty:

It's hard to know where to begin in trying to disentangle the knot of jingoism, recklessness, bad faith and bamboozlement that is President Bush's latest boast that if he had good intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts he would send US troops into Pakistan to catch him whether the Pakistanis agreed or not.

On Friday he suggested that he wouldn't because "Pakistan is a sovereign nation."...

So on nabbing bin Laden in Pakistan it sounds like the president was against it before he was for it....

Why do we think President Bush would send troops into Pakistan to get bin Laden without permission when he wouldn't keep troops in Afghanistan (a country then wholly under American occupation) when we had bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora?

Read the rest of this post...

NYT/CBS poll spells trouble for GOP, Bush

A friend just sent me the following summary of the poll:

Democrats Lead on Congressional Ballot By 15. With less than seven weeks until Election Day, 50% of voters say they will vote for Democrats in the midterm elections, while only 35% are voting for a Republican.

Bush Got NO Bump Out of Latest Terror/Iraq Speeches. After the latest round of speeches in which he tried to tie Iraq to the war on terror, including the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bushs approval rating is still just 37%, virtually unchanged from the last survey. And Bushs approval ratings on the war on terror havent changed at all since the last poll.

Americans and Even Republicans Have Anger Towards GOP Congress That Mirrors 1994. The current alienation of the Republican Congress is as intense as it has been since the bombshell election of 1994, signaling the challenge Republicans face in trying to maintain their control. 78% of voters including two-thirds of Republicans said most members of Congress dont deserve to be re-elected and its time for a change, the highest number since 1994.

Voters Agree That GOP Has Run a Do-Nothing Congress. Two-thirds of Americans agree that the GOP has run a do-nothing Congress. In fact, most people cant name a single accomplishment.

Read the rest of this post...

Hillary is reportedly running for prez

The fact that McAuliffe says he's running her campaign, means she's going to have a campaign, assuming this story is correct.

Very interesting.

UPDATE: McAuliffe issued a denial of sorts we learned via Political Wire:

Dumbest thing I ever heard.

Is that a "NO"? Read the rest of this post...

Abramoff allies had over 100 Bush White House meetings, including meetings with Bush

Drip, drip, drip... Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Speaking of terrorists, where is Osama? You remember him, the guy Bush compared to Hitler, Stalin, and slavery. The guy who Bush let get away at Tora Bora. The guy who Bush pulled the troops hunting for him in Afhganistan out in order to prepare for war with Iraq. The guy who, just last year, Bush shut down the secret CIA office in charge of hunting him down.

That guy.

Where is he? Or is Hitler now a good guy? Read the rest of this post...

National Journal's "Hotline," R.I.P.

It used to be that people who asked tough questions were called journalists. Nowadays, they're called terrorists.

At least that's what National Journal's "Hotline" publication called liberal bloggers, including this blog by implication, in today's edition.

In a factually-vacant and incorrect article that belies the larger problem with American journalism today, the Hotline today "reported" three rather curious things.

1. Liberal bloggers are akin to terrorists (I'm not making this up).

2. Democratic Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb is actually controling and coordinating what big liberal blogs write (news to me).

3. That writer Josh Marshall, who is himself Jewish, is an anti-Semite. (And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, no he's not.)

There was a time when you simply HAD to read the Hotline to get the latest news, the latests polls, and all the tidbits of gossip that make up the fabric of politics inside Washington. And you paid heartily for it - to the tune of $5000 a year.

Now all that information is available for free on the Web via the blogs and other sites like Rasmussen. There simply is no need - or at least, much less need - to buy the cow when you get the milk for free.

Clearly the Hotline and National Journal, like so many media outlets, are feeling increasing pressure to prove their rather costly relevance. But doing so at the expense of the facts does a disservice to Hotline's paid subscribers and to those who Hotline defames with fictional "gossip" that they quite simply pull out of their hats.

For the record, I am not a terrorist. As for Jim Webb, I only met him for first time at a cocktail party two nights ago - he didn't have a clue who I was even after I was introduced. And finally, I have a funny feeling that bloggers M.J. Rosenberg, Isaac Chotiner, and Josh Marshall aren't anti-Semites - and that was, sure as hell, the between-the-lines implication at the end of Hotline's story.

Hotline, like far too many inside-the-beltway types, has little understanding of the blogs. They don't know the individual bloggers, don't read or understand the blogs themselves, and have little concept of what blogs do or why they're so popular.

In that situation, a real journalist doesn't simply fill the void in his knowledge by making stuff up and repeating GOP talking points. A real journalist, and a real editor, calls up the source and gets the facts, or he doesn't run the story.

The real irony is that if bloggers were as bad as Hotline claims, we'd be publishing articles as error-laden, factless, and biased as Hotline did today. Read the rest of this post...

Uh oooooohhhhhhh Jooooeee

It's not a good year to be an incumbent. Especially if you are a Republican or a GOP-wannabe. Or running in a party you named for yourself. Read the rest of this post...

Gannon fired

About fraking time. I was waiting for the Blade to hire an ex-gay columnist, along with maybe the weekly wisdom from the Klan. Now that they've finally rid themselves of their former editor, sanity returns to what was once an influential and worth-reading gay paper. Perhaps some day it will be worth reading again.

Note from John: We're breaking our "no more Gannon/Guckert" rule to bring you this news, cuz it's funny. Don't expect any more Gannon stories, unless of course it's revealed that Gannon is really Ken Mehlman's love-child, then you can bet we'll report on it, with pictures. Read the rest of this post...

President Bill Clinton: "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit."

Excerpts from the New Yorker's profile of Bill Clinton that apparently they refuse to put online. Silly silly. No linky linky.

A few snippets from the Huff Post's snippets:

• Clinton on the Kerry campaign: "Like a deer caught in the headlights."
• Clinton on the vote to go into Iraq: "I'm sick and tired of being told that if you voted for authorization you voted for the war. It was a mistake, and I would have made it, too....The administration did not shoot straight on the nuclear issue or on Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11."
• Chelsea on her father's handling of the AIDS crisis after writing a thesis on the subject at Oxford: "I gave you a grade," she told her father. "What did I get?" Clinton asked. "C-plus." Her rationale: "You didn't do nearly enough. But you did more than anyone else in the world."
• Clinton on dying: "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me...I just don't want anyone to die before their time anymore."

Read the rest of this post...

George Allen is a pig (no pun intended)

Salon's quote of the day:

Virginia Sen. George Allen, explaining how news that his grandfather was Jewish is "just an interesting nuance to my background":

"I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."

Where are Abe Foxman and the ADL on this? Read the rest of this post...

All politics is local, episode 54,837

Yesterday President Bush and Iranian President Ahmadinejad both spoke at the UN. It's not entirely accurate to say they spoke to the UN, since both speeches were so clearly aimed at their respective domestic audiences.

President Ahmadinejad isn't going to change the UN by telling its members that the U.S. shouldn't be on the Security Council, and he's certainly not going to curry favor with the international community by accusing the UN of granting "blanketed and unwarranted support" of Israel. His speech was aimed at bolstering the nationalist populism on which he depends for support in Iran. He wasn't elected because of his foreign policy views (economic concerns largely drove his victory), but since he has made himself Iran's leading voice on the world stage, he'll use that pulpit to portray issues as matters of national pride, of Iranian honor, to increase his popularity. Nothing like saying the whole world is against you to get the wagons circled -- like a football coach telling his team that nobody gives 'em any respect.

President Bush similarly aimed at a domestic audience, delivering more platitudes about freedom in the Middle East and admonitions against "yield[ing] the future to terrorists." This despite the fact that his administration has helped yield the present to terrorists. Even when ostensibly speaking to Iranians, President Bush hit the points he's made in the past few weeks of the "scare the American people into voting Republican" campagin, and I seriously doubt his presentation changed the ever-worsening international opinion of the U.S.

In fact, President Bush delivered a line that has got to be the worst advertisement for democracy in the history of the world when he asserted, with no apparent sense of shame or irony, that "From Beirut to Baghdad, people are making the choice for freedom." So if you're living in the Middle East, and you want to see what the U.S. is trying to accomplish for you, look no further than Beirut and Baghdad! Absolutely unbelievable.

It was a day of theater at the UN, not diplomacy, and another opportunity for real engagement, persuasion, or negotiation was wasted. Read the rest of this post...

First ad running in campaign to overturn South Dakota's abortion ban

The first ads from South Dakota's Campaign for Healthy Families, which is working to overturn South Dakota's draconian abortion ban, have begun to air. Yesterday, NBC's First Read calls it the "most closely watched ballot measure"

Without a doubt, the most closely watched ballot measure on Election Day will be the referendum over South Dakota's abortion law, which bans all abortions except those needed to save the mother's life -- a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade at a time when the Supreme Court has two new conservative justices.

This is an important referendum. The sponsor of the South Dakota law, Roger Hunt, law told CNN months ago that he knew the law would be challenged but he figured there would be an anti-Roe majority by the time it reached the Supreme Court:

CROWLEY: The courts will never let this one stand. It will be challenged. That's precisely the point.

ROUNDS: And it will be struck down as unconstitutional at each and every appellate court level, up to the point that the Supreme Court would be the only court left to consider hearing it.

CROWLEY: Roger Hunt has always believed abortion is wrong. And South Dakota has a long history of antiabortion legislation. What gives this particular bill its juice is a reconstituted, more conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and one liberal member Justice John Paul Stevens about to celebrate his 86th birthday.

HUNT: So that means President Bush is probably going to have the opportunity in the next two to three years to appoint a third nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

CROWLEY: As it happens, it will take two to three years for South Dakota House Bill 1215 to work its way up to the high court.

Those right-wingers are long-term thinkers. But, Roger Hunt didn't expect the voters of South Dakota to overturn his law before it even got to the courts. Read the rest of this post...

Frist is threatening to filibuser McCain/Graham/Warner detainee bill

They've got one week left to finish their "national security agenda" before closing up shop and going home to campaign up until the election. And everything is grinding to a massive halt. Why? Because the Republicans are threatening to filibuster the bill put together by members of their own party.

Maybe we can get the Iraqis to come over and help the Republicans with their own civil war?

Not to mention, it's more than a bit funny that Senator "Nuclear Option" Frist is suddenly such a fan of filibusters. But then again, this time the filibuster isn't to protect the constitution from an insane far-right judge, it's to promote torture. And to today's Republican party, nothing is as important as protecting the right to torture. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

I'm still trying to figure out how we got Syria to torture the innocent Canadian guy if we don't talk to Syria. I guess only our torturers communicate. That's called torture diplomacy, invented by Bush and company.

Have your coffee and start chatting.... Read the rest of this post...

Coup in Thailand - any local Americablog readers out there?

A day after the coup d'etat in Thailand, the situation is becoming clearer to distant observers. Local political observers are saying that the coup was predictable and should have been seen by Thaksin, the PM of Thailand. I can't see how this is going to help Thailand in the short term but the problems of corruption were widespread. During my own visits to Thailand I always heard about corruption but it was not clear to me who was orchestrating it or where the money flowed.

The army commander Gen Sonthi Boonyarataglin staged a coup d'etat Tuesday evening (Thailand time) and ousted the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

A so-called "Democratic Reform Council" declared itself in control and declared martial law nationwide. Terse announcements said it included the commanders of all three armed forces and the police. It said the coup was necessary to correct "unprecedented division in the country."

The Council said there seemed to be widespread corruption, and independent agenies were subverted by politicians, apparently a reference to the Thaksin government. "The national government through the current administration has caused conflicts and undermined the harmony of the people as never before in history."

Public acceptance remained unknown. The coup occurred late Tuesday night, when Bangkok was under a major rainstorm, and few people were seen on the streets.

The opposition had scheduled a major anti-Thaksin rally for Wednesday. The last military coup, in 1991, was extremely unpopular and was overthrown by violent opposition in the streets.

Officers this time promised to hold power for as short a time as possible. An announcement over the name of Gen Sonthi, a Special Forces veteran long seen as apolitical, promised: "The council is steadfast in its objective, which is not to take over the government permanently and it will hand back the power to the people as soon as possible."

The Council repealed the 1997 "people's constitution" and dissolved both houses of parliament, the government and the constitution court. Announcements said the Council was under the King, and confirmed that the Privy Council and all courts except the Constitution Court remained in power.

Are there any Americablog readers in Thailand who have some local information? It's a shame to see this happen again so any feedback from the region would be well appreciated.

Read the rest of this post...

No wonder more troops are headed to Iraq

The bloodbath continues. I'll bet those people were impressed with Bush-style democracy. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

It's almost 6 weeks before the election. I'm just wondering when the GOP gay-baiting begins. Read the rest of this post...